Posts from the ‘Status Anxiety’ Category

Life seems a process of replacing one anxiety with another and substituting one desire for another – which is not to say that we should never strive to overcome any anxieties or fulfil any desires, but that we should perhaps build into our strivings an awareness of the way our goals promise us levels of rest and resolution that they cannot, by definition, deliver.

Well, this is the kind of thing I and many of my friends have been musing on and grappling with for years, put here so eloquently by Alain de Botton in his book Status Anxiety. During a recent conversation with my friends E and G, we agreed that the pursuit of happiness was a non project that needed to be abandoned.

One of the many great things about cows is they don’t seem to suffer from this very human affliction. They may have a pecking order but once that’s established they just get on with life. Their meditation is eating grass and ruminating. I shall take note.

Introducing the cows…

Hello I’m Belita. I’m small and perfectly formed though I’m rather timid. Lucy is my big sister and she really bosses me around.